Restoration Initiatives

C.P.R. For the Earth

Earth Island works to grow environmental leadership by supporting individuals and organizations that take action to protect the environment. By funding the Small Grants Program of the SCWRP, we fund a process that restores wetlands, educates communities, and builds organizational capacity.

Conservation, Preservation and Restoration

David Brower, founder of the Earth Island Institute, envisioned “C.P.R.” ambulances travelling to degraded and threatened habitats, equipped with the tools necessary to prevent and repair the damage.

Through the Small Grants Program, Earth Island Institute has been able to support locally based restoration efforts to do just that. Small grassroots efforts to restore the coastal habitats of Southern California, which have been depleted by an astounding 98%, have been slowly working to bring our wetlands back from the brink of extinction. By supporting and empowering the new restoration leaders, we ensure our collective success in restoring some of the earth’s most fragile ecosystems.

“For destruction let us substitute that fresh alternative, Restoration.” We can Conserve, Preserve and Restore through: Educating the diverse youth and communities of Southern California, supporting locally based restoration efforts, bringing back the long buried creeks and streams, connecting the waters of the mountains to the sea, allowing fish safe passage upstream, and restoring our fragile coastal habitats.

“By restoring the Earth, we have an opportunity to invest in ecological sanity, to reinvest in prosperity, to invest in an understanding of how nature works and what we have to do to let it work. It is healing time on Earth.” —David Brower, from Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Flow